Issue 54

SHE KEPT WAKING up at 4:45 in the morning, and when she did she felt lonelier than death, like an iron globe was locking over her heart. A dull but definite click. She could almost feel it, a shudder in the bed. Sometimes she went back to sleep and she would oversleep, staying in bed…

Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As men moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves…

For God is in heaven, and you upon earth. —Ecclesiastes 5:2 Don’t take your eyes off the road. Accept nothing as given. Watch where you put your hands. You’re here and God’s in heaven. Be careful where you step. The drop-off’s somewhere near. The fog won’t lift tonight. God’s in heaven. You’re here. That word…

The swallows dive near and twist Their invisible strings as if Binding you hand and foot, And tumble away, swallows like souls In paradise, whispering, “Here is one Who will increase our loves….” Every summer they came, they must have— Who could stop them?—to build Where they had built, looping The same knot theories and…

There was a dirt field I’d walk to as a girl, past the convenience store and the train tracks where the day laborers congregated with six-packs, where the two-lane road turned to one lane with yellow stripes and the vacant field loomed like a desiccated fallen sky. That’s where I’d go to sit on an…

The face of the Madonna with child makes a dark mirror of what you are to feel: the temporary but desperate way a part of you is wounded until the hurt becomes a lens. Inside you is a city the mosaic spells out with tiny precious stones across the ceiling and the walls, beginning with…

Lord Mouth dear Tongue dear Only-Pierceable- Parts to what now shall I compare Thee Lord I am a lonely man I do not see My children often to a summer’s day To autumn Lord Thou art more peaceable Less difficult to leave to die in more Relenting though the sun does set in the sea…

Lord of the hopeless also dear Hat-Soak Pole-in-the-Canal and Red-Tie Father Son And Holy Ghost not in that order break The rottenness of those who torture one Of Thy least wrath-deserving exiles me Not wholly undeserving no but some And isn’t it the some that counts with Thee O Gondola also as the trees pass…

There are panels of sky as good as forgotten, Evans’ gelatin folds of Florida circa 1934. The line of sky is dark at first where the gulf hits it, then comes to me like a halo around the palm tree with its neck bent, its spray of branches leaning out of frame as if to…

The view from the crest down to the river— you stopping to say that for three weeks each year and beginning tomorrow this will be the most beautiful place in the city—brick-faced buildings blushing in sunlight, star magnolias building and about to burst— soon to be our bright badges, medallions all the way down to…